It’s a little odd that different versions of the same character are different powers / rarity. (i.e. Black Widow - Modern is 1*, but Black Widow - Classic is 3*). I guess that’s good for people who really like Black Widow.
I guess that all of these collectible F2P games are about the same, economy-wise, the different currencies, variable rewards for re-playing content, etc. are all fairly familiar from the small amount of time I played with the other games of this type.
Where?
Serves 2 purposes, first, panders to comic book fans who actually care about different versions of characters, second, provides even more “gotta catch em all” collectible content fodder to hopefully keep players hooked & unlocking & collecting. Presumably, after collecting 37 different versions of Black Widow, prospect of unlocking totally new character, like a Captain America, to seem positively thrilling in contrast.
Yeah, if there’s no way to get gold coins beyond paying for them or one-time rewards (whether in single player or tournament), I see this getting uninstalled right around the time everyone has leveled the characters past their gold coin threshhold. Tournaments already verge on unplayable without leveling since the people who defeat you with their high level characters take up all of your available match slots.
I don’t mind grinding if I enjoy a F2P game enough, but I’m not paying. Which, of course, means I’m not the target audience. :)
Justin, out of curiosity, for market research purposes: how much would this game be worth to you if it was pay one time rather than F2P with IAP? Looking for a number between say $.99 and $12.99
Is the 3-star Black Widow more useful than the 1-star?
Edit: yeah her green sniper shot looks decent. I guess I won’t be playing in the Avengers tournament, since I don’t have three Avengers, and none on my “A” team.
There’s a bonus on cash purchases right now. Also supposed to be a free Thor on 10/13?
I don’t know, I would have been happy to spend plenty for a non-premium version of this, but even though I have now sunk considerable money into a f2p game (Warframe) I’m hesitant to spend money on this.
Who is your A team, out of curiosity? Most people seem to be using Iron Man since he’s easy to level and has some very good utility. Also, that tourney annoys me because Storm was an Avenger as of a couple years ago, but she’s not an option. If they’re going to do “primary affiliation” they need to mark it somewhere on the hero’s data.
I bought a couple of the 150 coin characters (with stuff earned in-game). I got 2-star Daken with the passive that creates strike tiles on green matches and 2-Star Magneto with the purple ability that let’s you convert three tiles to blue. The latter works especially well with Classic Storm (her blue and yellow abilities are great). I could easily sub in Iron Man, but haven’t been using him nearly as much.
Assuming it had the same amount of content, I would pay the same I paid for the original DS Puzzle Quest, which I think was $20-30. Though the XBLA version is probably the better analogue since it had multiplayer. Let’s say $20.
If I could put that same $20 into MPQ and (eventually) access everything there was to see, I’d do it. But when I see a gold coin package of $100 for sale, I figure that’s probably not going to happen.
But I’m sure none of this is very useful for research purposes, because I’m not one of those folks who believe that an iOS game has to be $10 or less no matter what amount of value it offers.
As a normal, pay-up-front, no F2P game, for $5 or less I’d have bought it sight-unseen. I’d pay up to $10 if somehow I could’ve been convinced in advance that I’d like it as much as I have so far, but that might be an unrealistic scenario considering the rough edges and poor documentation that make for a bad first impression. Maybe it could be rebalanced as a $3 game with a one-time $3 unlock for doubling ISO-8 rewards or something, I usually chip in for those IAPs.
I haven’t ruled out spending some money in this game with the F2P model as it stands, but I’m not far enough to understand exactly the value I’m getting. I don’t really know how far I can get my characters advanced without Hero Points, or how plentiful Hero Points will be going forward.
If I was imagining a compromise between the current model and no F2P at all, I’d want characters to be able to level up entirely w/o Hero Points. Throttling overall character advancement with power advancement that can be accelerated with covers—often acquired most easily with HP—seems like enough of an incentive as it is to get some people to spend money on HP, while some of us can grind away. I’m fine with the rest of it so far, HP to upgrade your collection size, and for better chances of recruiting better characters.
I agree with Justin. I tend to spend less on iOS games, and treat them as fairly disposable for the most part, but if this were a 3DS/Vita release at full retail (minus the freemium crap) I’d buy it in a heartbeat.
There’s a skip button on the left that puts a new match in that slot. I don’t think it penalizes you at all. For the SHIELD ladder, I’ve mostly been using it to clear out scrubs I’ve outleveled and thus won’t get many points for defeating, but you can just as easily drop people that are over your head currently. Overall, I’d say I’m not fond of the quasi-multiplayer model, since victory is basically assured unless you take on someone way above you. If anyone hasn’t noticed yet, the second and third attempts keep the enemy’s HP total, so any damage/KO’s you can manage will be kept. The only downside to taking more than one go at it is that your reward is decreased.
Oh, so that’s what that is! I didn’t know what it meant when I first saw it, so I’ve been filtering it out whenever I look at match pages.
And that you’re taking more damage, which is important if you want to try to play several consecutive matches (especially now that they reduced the available heals).
Is there a way to view / manage your team? Or is it just the team that you most recently used?
When you start a battle you can change out characters but the last used team will be the three you start with, from what I can tell.
btw, just got 500??? hero points for free for them screwing over my Loki! I’ll take that trade any day!
It happened in the last hour or so, so if anyone else had chars that were nerfed, its worth a check to see if they gave you anything.
No Idea. I hadn’t noticed the skip,button either. Duh.
Yeah, I’m having similar concerns. I’m enjoying the game so far but I can’t tell if I’m going to run out of single player content and get stuck needing to go MP or spend money to continue playing. I guess I’ll see where it goes.
Bear in mind the MP isn’t really MP. You play against other people’s teams, but it is ai controlled. I decided to get some hero points, but planned to only buy heroes with points earned in game, and the bought points for buying inv space and leveling. So, using the handy skip button, I got up to 450 in the normal tourney (which awards 100 hero points) and went to buy a hero. Daken, purple ability, which I already have. So I say screw it and buy one more: Magneto (Marvel now) with purple ability, the only other one I previously bought. So two buys, two dupes. Bleh.
Agreed – MP isn’t really that different from single-player, except that the AI-controlled enemies are player-built teams, and the rewards for grinding are generally better.
Thanks for the heads up on that, I hadn’t realized. I might have to try that out.
Anybody still playing? As much as I dislike the freemium model, you can get an awful lot of gameplay without paying anything, if you are willing to put up with the timers.
They’ve had an interesting tournament this weekend. One-star heroes only. Players are divided into brackets of 200 people. Top 50 in each bracket win new Captain America covers. I also got the blue Iron Man cover for hitting 400 points in the tournament, which I really wanted to get.